I'm hating the removal of Symbiosis, it was a phenomenal situational ability.
Overall, I'm really disliking where this game is going in regards to abilities. Seems like it's going toward 5 button LoL gameplay.
I actually like coming to a new fight and thinking about what abilities I have that could contribute to making it easier. Symbiosis was a huge part of that.

Guardian specific changes... Is it just me or are we looking like absolute beast powerhouses for WoD?

New Mastery looks to be bypassing Resolve, but since it's based on the same unmitigated incoming damage, looks to be a strong smoothing & overall damage reduction. Also scaling smoothly in AoE situations, unlike what Warriors and DK's got with new Riposte.

Rage generation shifted from auto attack to special attacks doesn't seem like a big realistic change. We were pressing them anyway, now we'll just get rage along with dishing out damage at the same time.

Primal Fury nerfed (from 15% to 5%) seems bad, but considering it now also affects special attacks AND scales with AoE tanking (5 rage per successful dodge) it's not that bad. Especially when you factor in Haste, which looks to be incredibly strong stat come 6.0. Reduced Mangle CD, reduced global cooldown.
It's like Sanctity of Battle which made all pallies go fullout haste, only even better because unlike pallies, it increases rage gen from ALL our abilities (pallies, excluding procs only get 5/9 HP generators sped up). Add to that increased Tooth&Claw procs, which are free to use with the leveling perk...

Talents also look very strong, especially compared to other tanks CDs. We'll have to see how Gladiator stance turns out though.
One is SI for 3sec, 1min cd, perfect for all the hardhitting, unavoidable attacks we've been sucking at whole expansion. Triple puncture, Talon Rake,...
Pulverise looks like a default go-to, increasing damage done, decreasing damage taken by a respectable amount, while also providing some flexibility and resource hoarding for periods when you want higher defences (Think Siegecrafter's Protective Frenzy, Nazgrim's Execute on 3 Sunders, Malkorok Blood rage,..) or simply bridging the gap between other CDs and/or Savage Defense on a prolonged high damage intake encounter (solo Thok p1 - amazing).

And 100% SD for 4 seconds.. Incredible OP/cheesing potential. Means 16 seconds of being unhittable. Boss Enraged and is hitting for 738 millions? NP, because if you can plan on it and hoard the charges, extend the fight by 16 seconds into enrage. Huge for DPS checks.
Granted, bosses enrages have generally changed from oneshotting people with melee one by one to simply instantly wiping the raid with various raidwide damage abilities (Malkorok, Thok, Siegecrafter, Dark Animus,...) but I bet we can still find a use for it. There's been plenty of encounters in the past with high-dodge cheesable mechanics.

Overall, it's hard to tell how we'll be because of the plethora of other WoD changes. The multitude of %DR changes especially look like they're bringing a more CD-active gameplay for us (which I warmly welcome) that has been a barren wasteland for us now. Barkskin, SI, MoU, yay.

But if you look at what other tank classes got...??
Pallies got some of their EF strength removed, from Bastion of Glory. Doesn't mean much, since it has to be rebalanced anyway, its scaling with vengeance is absurd. Most of pallies have to be rebalanced because of Vengeance damage output removal.
Warriors Gladiator stance we'll just have to wait and see in reality. Otherwise, quite unchanged so far, apart from getting shafted by new Riposte in AoE situations and getting some benefit out of haste.
DK's we'll also have to see, too many changes in limbo to be able to judge well. Riposte treatment (which is still their only benefit from Crit) and boring and possibly sucky (compared to ours at least) lvl100 talents aren't looking amazing, gotta say.
Monks are basically staying the same, but their current lvl100 talents are NOT strong. First is aright, passive magic damage reduction (They get ~15% magic DR, but they have to purify it) we already have. 2nd is almost solely a damage increase, situational and actually hurts their resource hoarding capabilities. 3rd is aright, but far from as strong as it sounds - out of those 10 seconds of free chi, half will be wasted because of energy cap. Also, they're the only other tank that has gotten +20% stamina from leveling perks.

It's almost certain they'll be getting some love in the future as well, but at least in cases of pallies, monks and warriors, I doubt there'll be as big a changes as with us. DK's likely will however.
In light of this tank balance disparity, I'm actually more worried that in a WoD world of higher HP pools and bosses hitting for less, healers having limited mana and throughput, where SD is already quite strong, we've been brought WAY over the OP line with all these changes. Personally, I see nerfs incoming.

damm rage allot ?!!!....dude sarcasme like: mage's are a 1 button class?!?
yes we have more things we can use. and you missed 1 in your 5...all druid classes get shred?!? so its 6 melee buttons if you take pulverize :P

I wasn't raging. That was an assumption on your part. Just pointing things out.

I doubt we'll be using Shred in bear form.

Sarcasm doesn't really work on the internet unless it's plainly obvious (which in this case it wasn't), or it's stated that its intended to be sarcastic.

Losing stuff such as Enrage and Symbiosis isn't that big of a deal, even though Symb was a fun gimmick from time to time. Enrage was barely ever used. Swipe is iconic so I'm sad to see it go, even though we're seeing the reintroduction of AoE spamming through Thrash, even though the intial damage isn't too sexy - a nice, even balance I'd say.

Any change to our mastery was going to be good, as it was pretty fucking boring to start with. Sure, there's the worry of will it play with us or agains't us (imagine taking a 3 damage tiny hit just before a major one, screwing you out on the nice, big absorb). Ultimately, I think it'll work fairly well and is in line with the other tanks where their mastery basically affects passive damage reduction.

Of the Draenor perks, I gotta say I really like Enhanced Tooth and Claw. Making it free will be pretty awesome, because right now it can sometimes feel like you're throwing away rage better spent elsewhere just to get the TnC effect up.

As for the talents, yay Pulverize! However, I see proper useage for all three talents, depending on the fight. Heavy physical damage fight with spikey damage, Guardian of Elune can really shine. Magic damage spikes, Bristling Fur really has it's uses.
I think Pulverize will be the most common one though, as it sort of fills both niches and gives us a nice big damage button to boot. I can only imagine that it'd be pretty easy to keep the uptime on Pulverize high for a fight that would need it.

I'm excited by these changes. I've been pacing back and forth between wether or not I want to play Guardian or Resto druid in WoD but as it stands, Im leaning more towards the tanking side.

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Originally Posted by Gothmog

And 100% SD for 4 seconds.. Incredible OP/cheesing potential. Means 16 seconds of being unhittable. Boss Enraged and is hitting for 738 millions? NP, because if you can plan on it and hoard the charges, extend the fight by 16 seconds into enrage. Huge for DPS checks.
Granted, bosses enrages have generally changed from oneshotting people with melee one by one to simply instantly wiping the raid with various raidwide damage abilities (Malkorok, Thok, Siegecrafter, Dark Animus,...) but I bet we can still find a use for it. There's been plenty of encounters in the past with high-dodge cheesable mechanics.

I can only imagine that there's still some form of DR on Dodging and that not every consecutive hit will be a guaranteed dodge. Unless I've missed the memo on dr.

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

Q: But who are the forum QQers going to QQ at now?
A: They'll find another name and still miss the point that Blizzard designs as a collective.

I can only imagine that there's still some form of DR on Dodging and that not every consecutive hit will be a guaranteed dodge. Unless I've missed the memo on dr.

In order for it to work as advertised, the dodge from SD would not be subject to diminish returns. Diminishing returns has generally be due to stats increasing a value of something, such as Dodge rating or Agility boosting our Dodge (both of which are bye-bye in WoD). Abilities that flat-out increase avoidance, such as SD and the new Riposte, shouldn't get the diminishing returns treatment.

I'm pretty sure a lot of these changes will get nerfed, but it seems like blizzard wanted to keep savage defense the way it was and give us even MORE hp. If I'm guessing right, healing a guardian from 1% to full will be an epic task since they are making healing harder, so they probably want us to self-heal a lot, which explains the tremedously higher rage generation we will be getting at basic gear levels.

On top of that, they are making us freaking cooldown gods, i looked quickly but didnt see any buffs of that magnitude for other tanks.

Those changes are exciting though, I'll be pissed if i don't get to tank an entire expansion again!

I'm pretty sure a lot of these changes will get nerfed, but it seems like blizzard wanted to keep savage defense the way it was and give us even MORE hp. If I'm guessing right, healing a guardian from 1% to full will be an epic task since they are making healing harder, so they probably want us to self-heal a lot, which explains the tremedously higher rage generation we will be getting at basic gear levels.

On top of that, they are making us freaking cooldown gods, i looked quickly but didnt see any buffs of that magnitude for other tanks.

Those changes are exciting though, I'll be pissed if i don't get to tank an entire expansion again!

With the amount of CD's implied, I'd have to agree something has to give in terms of survival. With the numbers they've given us, it could mean that Resolve (aka, the new Vengeance) just won't scale as well with FR to adjust it. The Pulverize 20% seems a bit... overboard, but it's likely a placeholder amount only to convey that we get X% damage reduction with our old Pulverize back. Recalling from memory, but wasn't the shorter CD and charge system on SI supposed to replace Symbiosis survival gains? I'd consider it a buff in almost every case, since most didn't do much of anything.

Another potential scenario is that there will be a massive reduction in our passive survival we have in MoP, and these cooldowns plus the sub-lvl 100 perks (such as the Guardian stamina buff) are meant to replace the old system instead of add upon it. While Blizz did released a good amount of information, there's a massive amount we still don't know.

In order for it to work as advertised, the dodge from SD would not be subject to diminish returns. Diminishing returns has generally be due to stats increasing a value of something, such as Dodge rating or Agility boosting our Dodge (both of which are bye-bye in WoD). Abilities that flat-out increase avoidance, such as SD and the new Riposte, shouldn't get the diminishing returns treatment.

I agree, I just have a hard time seeing it. The new Riposte does 100% parry without DR but it only does so for ONE attack. And it might just reset the DR after that specific parry, making the following one less likely etc etc.

I mean, imagine a situation where you're tanking 15 melee adds, 2 second swing timer on their melee hits. Popping this bad boy is essentially a divine shield without the threat loss for a solid 4 seconds, completely avoiding atleast 30 hits of damage. And that's assuming we cannot stack the duration up with more charges.

Someone mentioned the hypothetical scenario of completely dodge tanking an enraging boss until the charges and duration runs out. That also feels overpowered.

Maybe Im just not understand the talent or the mechanic (quite likely). It just feels really strong reading it at face value.

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

Q: But who are the forum QQers going to QQ at now?
A: They'll find another name and still miss the point that Blizzard designs as a collective.

Yea, im sure theres a lot we dont know yet, it was mostly the general directions.

That said, I haven't seen anyone talk about haste for bear tanks now... It's definitely looking like our new best stat: procs tooth&claw and speeds up our rotation just like prot paladins! which means at 50% haste we get 1gcd lacerates and 4sec cd mangles, pretty epic.

By the way, Celestation told Arielle (theincbear.com) on twitter that Mangle reset is infact still active on Lacerate. So that spell can still reset Mangle cooldown. Atleast in this revision of the class, things change.

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

Q: But who are the forum QQers going to QQ at now?
A: They'll find another name and still miss the point that Blizzard designs as a collective.

imagine taking a 3 damage tiny hit just before a major one, screwing you out on the nice, big absorb)

If the absorb is a normal buff, you should be able to click it off, including through macros. I could easily see wanting to have a "remove bubble" button that you hit when your WA tells you it's below a certain magnitude. Given how easy that would be, it makes me hope that they will change it so that the absorbs accumulate somehow.

If the absorb is a normal buff, you should be able to click it off, including through macros. I could easily see wanting to have a "remove bubble" button that you hit when your WA tells you it's below a certain magnitude. Given how easy that would be, it makes me hope that they will change it so that the absorbs accumulate somehow.

Overall very pleased and excited about the changes, though.

Yeah, you're right. Seems easily controlled, now that you mention it.

Perhaps have it soak a percentage of damage but with a top end cap, say a percentage of health. Means it could accumulate, still not be overly strong but also not be subject to either RNG or control, depending on how you approach it.

5 damage hit, it puts an absorb for 1.

5000 damage hit, it only puts an absorb for, let's say, 500 because that's a percentage of your max health?

Numbers completely hypothetical.

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

Q: But who are the forum QQers going to QQ at now?
A: They'll find another name and still miss the point that Blizzard designs as a collective.

I doubt the Mastery bubble will be worth tampering with. Perhaps in very specific examples of tanking a hardhitting boss with 1 pansy add.

With more than 2 mobs hitting you, they'll be triggering too fast to be able to react&differentiate between the strong and weak absorbs.

I for one, don't think it's worth doing anything about it. It's passive, it'll even out in the long run and we've (apparently) got a plethora of other tools to pay attention to and use well.

Add on top it's exactly what Blizz doesn't want people to do: /cancelaura as part of a survival rotation.

I'm certain the Mastery will get much attention and tweaking as needed. The wording feels slightly wonky to me, although I'm assuming that the intended method of working is that bear gets hit, bear gets bubble based on that hit, bubble absorbs next hit (I could also read it as bear gets hit, bear generates bubble based upon that hit and absorbs it, but I'm going to assume the former). While the good points of this Mastery are pretty apparent, I see a potential downside.

The downside I see is that armor has typically been our method of dealing with damage we can't avoid, aka the "burst damage" scenario. For example, things like Horridon lining up all his attacks at once or a frequently hard-hitting attack that we cannot avoid. If the bubble via mastery comes after a hit and/or won't be refreshed until a mastery bubble is gone, that leaves a gaping hole in our defenses. With Horridon, if you had a super-tiny bubble before the 3 instant attacks hit you, there's still massive potential to get one-shot (albeit slightly less). Frequent hard-hitting physical attacks can suffer the same treatment, since there's no guarantee that you'll have a sizable bubble (or a bubble at all) to deal with. The short version is that it probably will increase survivability in all dangerous scenarios, but there's still likelihood that our deaths would be out of our control. The solution I've seen thus far is potentially a lot of survival CD's and passives to increase EH, but the jury's still out since we don't have that info yet.

If we went with my latter interpretation, although I think the former is the correct interpretation, it'd be like a Monk's ability to stagger damage with no DoT attached. There's a huge plus side in that it would reduce burst potential, the down side is that it's really no better than armor (unless the physical attacks bypass armor, then it rocks).

There's still quite a few variables I'd want to know before taking the discussion much further (what our entire toolkit will be, how our EH pans out again other tanks with more reliable AM, how well Blizz implements the healing model into raid design, etc), as we can only parse words so much without just jumping to conclusions.

I'm still trying to figure out how that's even possible. But let's say for the sake of argument that it is. The first hit would consume the absorb, the 2nd one would generate a new absorb, and the third hit would consume the absorb generated by the 2nd hit. And since you'll almost always have the Rage to heal yourself after taking such a hit, I still don't see how this is a problem.

I guess you're referring to tanking 1 hard hitting and one piddly mob at the same time? I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of a scenario where that has existed this entire expansion - outside of maybe PGs.

It should just shield based on physical damage taken from attacks (if it's absorbed then it's not counted). I could be wrong but the wording makes it seem like if you absorb 5% of a massive hit, that 95% damage taken doesn't lead to giving you any shields.

I do love the 100 talents though.

The mastery is more like you absorb every other hit. Remember that we keep SD, T&C is getting buffed, we get 20% additional stamina (Gonna have SO much health compared to everyone else), barkskin is still at 30 sec CD for us, barkskin will be 30% DR instead of 20%, SI change is huge, ect, ect.

I feel that it'll be Cata beta for us again. Hugely OP and then nerfed into place. CDR is looking to be our strongest stat along with haste.

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Originally Posted by Ixuzcc

I can only imagine that there's still some form of DR on Dodging and that not every consecutive hit will be a guaranteed dodge. Unless I've missed the memo on dr.

Dodge/Parry RATING has DR to keep its value linear instead of exponential as it was pre-DR. There is no DR on Dodging/Parrying attacks.

Anyone ever notice how the sun seems to shine silverish now? Didn't it used to shine goldish? PM me if you've noticed this.

You guys have to remember though, we still get 2 charge tooth&claw procs, so using them for hits we dont have our asborb up could be an optimal way to play, though unless it changes, tooth&claw won't be able to asborb non-autoattack damage..

And yea... it does sound like CDR will be extremely strong for bears, which i dont like that much, but oh well. CDR shouldve been a tertiary stat in my opinion. Mostly for dps and sustained damage intake reason, as it will make our survival more bursty-ish, but they did buff berserk's duration to 20 seconds, and hopefully berserk's cooldown will be 2min or something to compensate.

I personally really hope haste is our best stat as i really love it's interaction with prot paladins, but id rather have something else than CDR as our second best stat.

Anyone can elaborate more about mastery? How is that bubble going to work?
Is it a bubble that appears after you take damage meaning next attack will be lowered, or it is a bubble that appears the very same moment the attack is done effectively reducing it.
Literally i'm trying to imagine "snapping bite" scenario and understand if boss attack pre bite is relevant or only the bite itself is.
If the bubble appears on next attack it's not as good as it sounds then, but if the bubble is retracted from the current attack, I will be a happy bear.

As for other things im interested in is the save defense. Is it 4 seconds overall or only for that talent? Once again, if its only the later I guess its fair, but man, it would be nice to get a proper 6s sd.

It will also be very interesting to get to know about the rage gen, wonder how it will be compared to current rage generation in bis gear.